Hungarian PM wins vote of confidence

Budapest: Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, who has come under intense pressure to quit after admitting he lied to voters, won a confidence motion convincingly in parliament yesterday.

Gyurcsany, who secured the votes of 207 MPs with 165 against, earlier told parliament he would not bow to opposition "blackmail" and vowed to stick to his tough economic programme.

He still faces what is expected to be a large protest rally over his refusal to quit since he admitted having lied about the economy to win an election in April.

"I call on parliament not to give in to threats and street blackmail organised by the opposition," he said in a speech before the confidence vote, the first since democracy was restored in Hungary in 1990 after decades of communist rule.

Gyurcsany once again apologised for the tone of his leaked comments, on a profanity-ridden tape, at a meeting with Socialist MPs in May, and for not being brave enough to tell the truth in the election campaign. But he did not apologise for lying to the voters.

"We must stick to this programme ... balance is needed, reforms are needed and development is needed for this country," he told parliament yesterday.

Gyurcsany called the vote to win parliament's backing for his plans to slash the budget deficit, the biggest in the European Union. He has a 34-seat majority in the assembly.

He and his Socialist-led government campaigned on tax cuts but, after retaining power, introduced big tax rises to reduce a budget deficit which has ballooned to 10.1 per cent of gross domestic product under Socialist rule since 2002. The budget deficit target for 2006 was 4.7 per cent of GDP, using European Union accounting methodology.

The main opposition Fidesz party said the prime minister had not allowed people to vote in April based on the facts and this was shown by the tape, leaked on September 17, in which he said "we lied in the morning, we lied in the evening" about the economy. That tape and tax rises and subsidy cuts have caused almost three weeks of protests outside parliament, which were set to intensify when Fidesz took to the streets later in the day.